


Fiery Eyes

by Linorien



Series: Twin Tales [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Camelot Remix Eligable, Gen, Not Beta Read, we die like Camelot knights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24382723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien
Summary: Elyan has left Camelot, but he cannot completely run from his troubles. And sometimes his beliefs are cast in a new light.
Series: Twin Tales [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1228421
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Fiery Eyes

Elyan wasn’t sure he liked living in the south of High Cliffe. The people were strange. But he had wanted to leave Camelot and this was as far as he was willing to go. The mountains blocked the north and the west, the sea blocked the east, and he wasn’t sure yet about living in a kingdom that wasn’t currently an ally of Camelot. Perhaps once he established himself as a respected blacksmith. 

Until then, he was in a village near the border with Lancashire apprenticing under an older man named James. Though everyone called him Jim.

He’d given Elyan tests at first, making sure he really did know his way around a forge, but now he trusted Elyan to work in there alone while he made some deliveries. And he’d opened his home to him. 

It was strange. Elyan’s own family had always felt large, he had his sister, his parents, and his mother had worked in the York household so he grew up with Leon and later Baddon as well. Not to mention all the other household staff that kept him in line when his own parents were busy. Then everything fell apart and he left. 

And Jim lived by himself. 

Sometimes. He seemed to collect children like stray cats. They came to the forge after closing and brought small gifts, hoping in exchange for stories or maybe some of his stew. Which, yes, the man made a hearty stew that was more filling than it had any right to be. But Elyan still didn’t understand why the village parents didn’t feed their own kids. 

“They aren’t village kids,” Jim replied when Elyan finally asked. “They live in the hills.”

Elyan assumed it was some group of travellers that camped in the foothills of the mountains. 

A few weeks later, when Jim finally allowed him to open the forge in the morning, he started to suspect he was missing something. 

“You forgot the blessing,” JIm reprimanded him before he could light the fire. 

“What?” His father had never done any blessing. That sort of thing could get you killed in Camelot if the wrong person heard. 

Jim seemed to remember that, too. He let out a heavy sigh. “How fast traditions die with a tyrant on the throne,” he muttered. “You can do what you want in your own smithy, but in my place we ask the blessings of the spirits before lighting the fire.” He took the piece of flint from Elyan’s hand and placed it on the largest anvil. “Spirits of the fire, we ask your blessing on this day. May the flame burn bright and our hammer strike true. Let everything we make be pleasing to you.” Then he handed it back to Elyan. 

“Now I light the fire?”

“If the flint does not crumble in your hand when you pick it up, yes. But if it ever does that,” he warned, “do not light your forge that day. It is a warning that nothing will go right.”

Elyan nodded. It seemed highly unlikely that flint would ever crumble. It wouldn't be flint if it did. But soon it became a habit. The words were empty in his mouth as he spoke them each morning. He didn’t believe in spirits. Not like she did. Not anymore.

And he thought nothing more about the ritual until the day the children came in the morning. Elyan was hammering out a set of candlesticks that the local lord had ordered when he glanced up and saw a group of them standing in the forge. He started. “I didn’t hear you come in. Jim’s in the house.”

Quiet as a mouse they turned as one and left. It was eerie, but he went back to his work. He’d nearly finished the piece when Jim rushed in. “Put out the fire; we need to leave. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

“No time. Drop it in the bucket.” 

Elyan did as instructed and dunked the candlestick, cooling the hot metal. Jim had taken the other bucket and thrown it on the fire. He spread out the coals as quickly as possible and tossed dirt in to really smother it. 

Shutting the door to the furnace, he practically yanked Elyan out. The children were waiting for them. As soon as they were outside, they ran for the forest. 

Jim and Elyan followed. They kept following. They reached the foothills and then the children vanished. 

Elyan slowed. “Where did they go?”

“In the hills. Follow me.”

Elyan was puzzled, but he followed. Suddenly they wound up a foot-worn path and there was a door. In the side of a hill. Jim rapped thrice and pushed it open. Warily, Elyan also walked inside. 

It was a cavernous room in every sense of the word. The ceiling opened up into the hill behind the door and arched upward like a grand entrance hall of a manor. A small fire in the center kept it warm, smoke curling upward and out through a small tunnel he couldn’t see. Candles hung from mounts around the large room, casting their flickering light dimly against the earth. It was just bright enough to see the young woman sitting by the fire, staring into the flames.

Without hesitation, Jim approached her and sat on the opposite side of the fire. “What did you See?”

She looked up and her eyes were flames. When she answered, her voice was hash, crackled. “Raiders, from the south. They will destroy the village.”

“When? We can warn them,” Elyan said. He couldn’t fight like a knight, but years of working in a forge had made him strong. Give him a hammer and he could at least try to protect the villagers. 

“It is too late. Already they burn the town hall.”

Jim shook his head. “Could you warn anyone else?”

She nodded. “I sent a message to the healer and the elder. But I fear they did not listen.”

“And how clear was your message?” Jim challenged. “Because all the children said was ‘come with us’ and then walked outside. Not exactly a warning of imminent danger.”

“But you came.”

“Only because I grew up with you. You know the others didn’t.”

Elyan listened to them bicker as we walked around the hall. He was having a bit of a crisis because there was no way that woman was human. 

No human woman had fire in her eyes; it was merely an expression his father sometimes used when his mother got angry at him. He’d laugh and tell Elyan to watch out for when Gwen got that look. He said you never argue with a woman with fire in her eyes. Let them shout at you until they cool and then you can talk. Though he also warned that they were probably right and the best you could hope for is understanding what got them so angry. 

This woman looked like her fire would never die. 

He had always assumed the spirits his mother asked blessings of were tiny folk. He’d imagined them like mice, hiding in the corners and listening for your words. He didn’t think they looked like her. 

Glancing back at the fire, he could see the two still bickering. Jim seemed to be very familiar with this spirit-woman. He had said they grew up together. Elyan wondered how one grows up with a spirit. 

“Elyan,” the woman called his name before his mind could wander further down that line of reasoning. He turned around. “Come sit with us. It will be a while.”

Understatement of the year. They stayed in that cave for almost a fortnight while the raiders, well, raided the village. Sometimes the woman would look into the flames and announce a death of a villager. All the time they ate Jim’s filling soup. 

“Why didn’t you help them?” Elyan asked on the sixth night. “You said you sent a warning, but couldn’t you have done more?” Why can’t you help them now?”

“I am not allowed to directly influence the lives of humans. None of the spirits are,” she explained patiently. “Warnings are permitted because the human can choose to ignore them.”

“Or they could be misinterpreted,” interrupted Jim.

“And many times they are, even when I think I’ve been quite clear. And sometimes, our attention is divided. We are neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. Right now I’m worried about this village and I am doing what I can to pull strings to protect as many of them as possible, but I do so knowing that I’m not adequately watching the small encampment in the mountains. Even when none of that excuses us, sometimes it is simply a person’s time to die and there’s nothing we can do.”

Her eyes were bright as she pinned down Elyan’s real reason for asking. It had been two years since his mother died and he was still bitter. Like Jim, she had always asked the spirits for blessings and thanked them at the end of the day. He grew up believing in friendly spirits who watched over them and took care of them. Even though they were not a wealthy family, they were happy and he believed it was thanks to the spirits. 

So how could these spirits let his mother be taken from him? Immediately, he’d stopped saying his own blessings. He’d scoffed at the other villagers saying they would pray for his family cause what god would let his mother die when she had so much more to give him?

Elyan had ripped all religion out of his life then and he wasn’t sure there was still a place for it. But it had become much harder to deny the existence of spirits. And they were more human than he’d previously thought. 

He didn’t reply.

* * *

When they returned to the forge, it was ransacked. The didn’t light the forge for a few days, cleaning up and taking stock was more important. Then they delayed a few more days helping the other villagers recover after the king’s men had chased off the raiders. Many gardens had been trampled and they helped replanting what could be saved. 

And when Elyan did finally wake up early to light the fire again, the words of the blessing tasted sweeter on his tongue and the flint sparked bright on first strike.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was the prompt: Create a three-pillar mythos for your character: What do they fear, what do they want, and what are they willing to do to get what they want. Then give them a mantra, or a code by which they live. Then create a scenario in which the mantra and the pillars collide, and something’s got to give.  
> I sorta had the idea that he feared not being able to make it as a blacksmith, he wants to forge a new life for himself, and he is willing to leave Camelot to do so. Then I started examining why he left Camelot and a different story happened.


End file.
